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Morgan's Passing (Arena) by Tyler, Anne New Edition
"An almost flawless story of love... Morgan emerges as a true hero."Los Angeles Times
Morgan Gower works at Cullen's hardware store in north Baltimore. He has seven daughters and a warmhearted wife, but as he journeys into the gray area of middle age, he finds his household growing tedious. Then Morgan meets two lovely young newlyweds under some rather extreme circumstances — and all three discover that no one's heart is safe....
From the Paperback edition.
Morgan Gower works at Cullen's hardware store in north Baltimore. He has seven daughters and a warmhearted wife, but as he journeys into the gray area of middle age, he finds his household growing tedious. Then Morgan meets two lovely young newlyweds under some rather extreme circumstances — and all three discover that no one's heart is safe....
From the Paperback edition.
Paperback Bunko
First published January 1, 1980
212 people are currently reading
2328 people want to read
About the author
Anne Tyler
113 books9,009 followersAnne Tyler was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1941 and grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. She graduated at nineteen from Duke University and went on to do graduate work in Russian studies at Columbia University. She has published 20 novels, her debut novel being
If Morning Ever Comes
in (1964). Her eleventh novel,
Breathing Lessons
, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 227 reviews
May 14, 2023
Love you, Anne, but this book was just not it.
This book was (spoiler alert) literally about an unhappy married man who becomes obsessed with a younger couple and then essentially stalks them until the wife falls for him instead. But it’s presented in the quaint and quirky way Anne Tyler always writes, so it’s presented as if it’s okay?
Idk, I just struggled to care about these characters which is a huge aspect of what I normally love about her books. It should’ve been way shorter too.
But now I’ve officially completed all 24 of Anne Tyler’s currently published novels! So there’s that at least.
This book was (spoiler alert) literally about an unhappy married man who becomes obsessed with a younger couple and then essentially stalks them until the wife falls for him instead. But it’s presented in the quaint and quirky way Anne Tyler always writes, so it’s presented as if it’s okay?
Idk, I just struggled to care about these characters which is a huge aspect of what I normally love about her books. It should’ve been way shorter too.
But now I’ve officially completed all 24 of Anne Tyler’s currently published novels! So there’s that at least.
August 21, 2009
It had been so long since I read Anne Tyler, I began to miss her. So I decided to reread Morgan’s Passing because it’s one of the books I least remember, likely because this book isn’t so much a well-plotted story as it is a great character study of protagonist, Morgan Gower. But this is typical of Anne Tyler’s work, as she has been known to admit, though she does not do many interviews.
Morgan’s Passing is similar to The Accidental Tourist (the better of the two books) in that both main characters are eccentric men, although in different ways. Evidently, the inspiration for Morgan’s Passing, which is set in Baltimore, came from an article in the Baltimore newspaper about a local man who was discovered to be impersonating a doctor and who had previously passed himself off as a clergyman. (Croft 1995) In an interview, Tyler has been quoted as saying that she was “very taken with Morgan, as she has always been fascinated by imposters and their deceptions.” And Morgan is a master imposter, with a costume at the ready whenever required: doctor, river-boat-gambler, jockey, foreign art dealer, Greek shipping magnate, sailor, Daniel Boone, inventor; the list goes on.
The novel opens with Morgan assuming the identity of a doctor when Emily Meredith, in the midst of performing a puppet show with husband Leon, goes into labour. Morgan delivers the baby in a car, and afterwards they go their separate ways. But Morgan feels awed by the Merediths – by their austerity, their certitude, their mapped and charted lives – a sharp contrast to his own home life which is too overwhelming with (easy-going) wife Bonny, their seven daughters, Morgan’s mother, Louisa, who seems to be suffering from Alzheimer’s, and sister Brindle. He begins to stalk the young family, hiding behind various costumes.
It is when his oldest daughter marries, that Morgan, obviously already lacking a sense of identity, falls into a full-fledged midlife crisis. Not only are his daughters no longer children, they find him embarrassing.
He slips away from the marriage reception and makes his way to the Merediths’ apartment, located above Crafts Unlimited, where some of Emily’s puppets are sold. He forgets he’s wearing his wedding top hat until the shopkeeper, Mrs. Apple, is taken aback by his attire. But then Morgan sees the puppets. “Ah, so!” he says. “Ze poppets!” Morgan is surprised that he seems to have developed an accent – although from what country, he can’t say. “Zese poppets are for buying?” After being told yes, and that they are sewn by Emily, who lives upstairs, Morgan suggests he see zis Emily’s workroom.
Meanwhile, he sees his reflection in cabinet doors made of wavery glass…and they reflected a shortened and distorted view of Morgan – a squat, bearded man in a top hat. Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course! He adjusted the hat, smiling. Everything black turned transparent in the glass. He wore a column of rainbow-coloured weaving on his head and a spade of weaving on his chin. “You see, I also am artiste,” he told the woman. Definitely, his accent was a French one.” And because he is an artist, and it would mean a great deal to him, he convinces Mrs. Apple to lead him up the staircase to the apartment.
Leon answers the door and when he sees Morgan, he says, “Dr. Morgan!” Leon is not pleased, Morgan is ashamed, Mrs. Apple ends up laughing about the whole charade, saying, “Oh, you poor man… You and your ‘zis and zat.’ Your ‘zese and zose’” She’s still laughing after convincing Leon to show Morgan the puppets.
Emily reacts in much the same way as Leon, but she clarifies: “I don’t understand you,”…. (He should have known. She would not veil anything; she was as uncurtained as her windows.) “What do you want of us? What are you after? Why did you trail us all those months and lurk in doorways and peer around corners?” Morgan is staggered by the fact that she’d noticed. And when Emily asks why couldn’t he have come straight up and say hello, like an ordinary person would, he says it’s because he’d “built up this idea of you. I almost preferred watching, don’t you see. My own household is impossible. Very confusing, very tedious,” he says. Then he makes up a series of detailed, fictional stories about life as a doctor. After all that, when Emily says no, she really doesn’t want to be friends with him, he confesses: “I’m not a doctor. I work in a hardware store… I manage Cullen Hardware.” But he delivered their baby! Ah well, he hadn’t witnessed three of his daughters’ births for nothing. “I presented myself untruthfully. I do that often, in fact… It’s not something I intend, you understand. It almost seems that other people push me into it. That day you called for a doctor in the house: no one else came forward… I had no inkling I’d actually have to deliver a baby. Events just… rolled me forward, so to speak.” He continues with “Please. It’s not entirely my fault… Why are people so willing to believe me? And what is more depressing is that they’ll believe me all the quicker if I tell them something disillusioning. I might say, for instance, that being a movie star is not what it’s cracked up to be. I’ll say the lights are so hot that my make-up runs, and there’s forever this pinkish-gray stain around the inside of my collar that my wife despairs of. Clorox has no effect on it; not even Wisk does, though she’s partially solved the problem by prevention. What she does, see, is rub my collar with a bar of white bath soap before I put a shirt on. Yes, that seems to work out fairly well, I’ll say.” Leon thinks that’s crazy and Morgan agrees. But Emily sort of knows what he means: “He just… has to get out of his life, sometimes,” she says. At this point in the story, it is 1971, but the novel covers twelve years – from 1967-1979.
The main narrative follows the lives of the Merediths, and the Gowers and how Emily and Leon become involved with Morgan and Bonny and their family, and the eventual breakup of both marriages. For about two-thirds of the story, Anne Tyler had me laughing out loud at Morgan and the audacity of his actions. But then I began to find him irritating, and then downright selfish. By the time Morgan leaves Bonny for Emily, just as Macon in The Accidental Tourist left his wife for a much younger woman, I didn’t blame Bonny for throwing all Morgan’s belongings out, and then her coup: she writes a fictional obituary about him in the local paper, knowing he always reads the obits. And yet, I think Anne Tyler wanted the reader to empathize with Morgan despite his flaws and his self-indulgence. Perhaps that’s why the secondary narrative focuses on Morgan’s equally eccentric sister, Brindle. We first meet her as a widow, always in a bathrobe, moping. ‘How was your day?’ … and she says, ‘Day?’ She acts surprised to hear there’s been one. Brindle pines for her high school sweetheart, Robert Roberts, until he reappears in her life. They marry; the marriage fails, much to the consternation of Robert. After Robert is gone, Brindle pines for her first husband. Compared to Brindle, Morgan is a much more sympathetic character.
At one point, before the actual demise of the marriages, Emily wonders why she puts up with Morgan’s presence: But it was funny how he grew on a person. He added something; she couldn’t say just what. He made things look more interesting than they really were.
And when Morgan first brings the Merediths home, he surprises Bonny with the news that he’s told the Merediths who he really is. And this is the gist of it, really: Morgan’s biggest challenge in life is to be himself, and for some reason he can do that with Emily. Perhaps it’s because Bonny, although aware of Morgan’s fantasy life, never seems very concerned about it, and so Morgan had no real motive to be himself.
And this is why I missed Anne Tyler: I enjoy her abundant use of trivial detail to show the extraordinary in the lives of seemingly ordinary people (which is why I quoted so much of the text). The reader can identify with her characters because they are so well-developed that there is bound to be something we recognize – people are true to life with their emotions and misunderstandings and views of love and marriage. Often, her themes are depressing: flawed relationships; the loneliness, or aloneness, that exists in all of us; or the sense of our own mortality that is always there. But comic relief runs rampant, which is how I was able to pass through my period of emotional angst regarding Morgan Gower. And in the end, like all the main characters, I was left feeling quite satisfied with the way things turned out.
Morgan’s Passing is similar to The Accidental Tourist (the better of the two books) in that both main characters are eccentric men, although in different ways. Evidently, the inspiration for Morgan’s Passing, which is set in Baltimore, came from an article in the Baltimore newspaper about a local man who was discovered to be impersonating a doctor and who had previously passed himself off as a clergyman. (Croft 1995) In an interview, Tyler has been quoted as saying that she was “very taken with Morgan, as she has always been fascinated by imposters and their deceptions.” And Morgan is a master imposter, with a costume at the ready whenever required: doctor, river-boat-gambler, jockey, foreign art dealer, Greek shipping magnate, sailor, Daniel Boone, inventor; the list goes on.
The novel opens with Morgan assuming the identity of a doctor when Emily Meredith, in the midst of performing a puppet show with husband Leon, goes into labour. Morgan delivers the baby in a car, and afterwards they go their separate ways. But Morgan feels awed by the Merediths – by their austerity, their certitude, their mapped and charted lives – a sharp contrast to his own home life which is too overwhelming with (easy-going) wife Bonny, their seven daughters, Morgan’s mother, Louisa, who seems to be suffering from Alzheimer’s, and sister Brindle. He begins to stalk the young family, hiding behind various costumes.
It is when his oldest daughter marries, that Morgan, obviously already lacking a sense of identity, falls into a full-fledged midlife crisis. Not only are his daughters no longer children, they find him embarrassing.
He slips away from the marriage reception and makes his way to the Merediths’ apartment, located above Crafts Unlimited, where some of Emily’s puppets are sold. He forgets he’s wearing his wedding top hat until the shopkeeper, Mrs. Apple, is taken aback by his attire. But then Morgan sees the puppets. “Ah, so!” he says. “Ze poppets!” Morgan is surprised that he seems to have developed an accent – although from what country, he can’t say. “Zese poppets are for buying?” After being told yes, and that they are sewn by Emily, who lives upstairs, Morgan suggests he see zis Emily’s workroom.
Meanwhile, he sees his reflection in cabinet doors made of wavery glass…and they reflected a shortened and distorted view of Morgan – a squat, bearded man in a top hat. Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course! He adjusted the hat, smiling. Everything black turned transparent in the glass. He wore a column of rainbow-coloured weaving on his head and a spade of weaving on his chin. “You see, I also am artiste,” he told the woman. Definitely, his accent was a French one.” And because he is an artist, and it would mean a great deal to him, he convinces Mrs. Apple to lead him up the staircase to the apartment.
Leon answers the door and when he sees Morgan, he says, “Dr. Morgan!” Leon is not pleased, Morgan is ashamed, Mrs. Apple ends up laughing about the whole charade, saying, “Oh, you poor man… You and your ‘zis and zat.’ Your ‘zese and zose’” She’s still laughing after convincing Leon to show Morgan the puppets.
Emily reacts in much the same way as Leon, but she clarifies: “I don’t understand you,”…. (He should have known. She would not veil anything; she was as uncurtained as her windows.) “What do you want of us? What are you after? Why did you trail us all those months and lurk in doorways and peer around corners?” Morgan is staggered by the fact that she’d noticed. And when Emily asks why couldn’t he have come straight up and say hello, like an ordinary person would, he says it’s because he’d “built up this idea of you. I almost preferred watching, don’t you see. My own household is impossible. Very confusing, very tedious,” he says. Then he makes up a series of detailed, fictional stories about life as a doctor. After all that, when Emily says no, she really doesn’t want to be friends with him, he confesses: “I’m not a doctor. I work in a hardware store… I manage Cullen Hardware.” But he delivered their baby! Ah well, he hadn’t witnessed three of his daughters’ births for nothing. “I presented myself untruthfully. I do that often, in fact… It’s not something I intend, you understand. It almost seems that other people push me into it. That day you called for a doctor in the house: no one else came forward… I had no inkling I’d actually have to deliver a baby. Events just… rolled me forward, so to speak.” He continues with “Please. It’s not entirely my fault… Why are people so willing to believe me? And what is more depressing is that they’ll believe me all the quicker if I tell them something disillusioning. I might say, for instance, that being a movie star is not what it’s cracked up to be. I’ll say the lights are so hot that my make-up runs, and there’s forever this pinkish-gray stain around the inside of my collar that my wife despairs of. Clorox has no effect on it; not even Wisk does, though she’s partially solved the problem by prevention. What she does, see, is rub my collar with a bar of white bath soap before I put a shirt on. Yes, that seems to work out fairly well, I’ll say.” Leon thinks that’s crazy and Morgan agrees. But Emily sort of knows what he means: “He just… has to get out of his life, sometimes,” she says. At this point in the story, it is 1971, but the novel covers twelve years – from 1967-1979.
The main narrative follows the lives of the Merediths, and the Gowers and how Emily and Leon become involved with Morgan and Bonny and their family, and the eventual breakup of both marriages. For about two-thirds of the story, Anne Tyler had me laughing out loud at Morgan and the audacity of his actions. But then I began to find him irritating, and then downright selfish. By the time Morgan leaves Bonny for Emily, just as Macon in The Accidental Tourist left his wife for a much younger woman, I didn’t blame Bonny for throwing all Morgan’s belongings out, and then her coup: she writes a fictional obituary about him in the local paper, knowing he always reads the obits. And yet, I think Anne Tyler wanted the reader to empathize with Morgan despite his flaws and his self-indulgence. Perhaps that’s why the secondary narrative focuses on Morgan’s equally eccentric sister, Brindle. We first meet her as a widow, always in a bathrobe, moping. ‘How was your day?’ … and she says, ‘Day?’ She acts surprised to hear there’s been one. Brindle pines for her high school sweetheart, Robert Roberts, until he reappears in her life. They marry; the marriage fails, much to the consternation of Robert. After Robert is gone, Brindle pines for her first husband. Compared to Brindle, Morgan is a much more sympathetic character.
At one point, before the actual demise of the marriages, Emily wonders why she puts up with Morgan’s presence: But it was funny how he grew on a person. He added something; she couldn’t say just what. He made things look more interesting than they really were.
And when Morgan first brings the Merediths home, he surprises Bonny with the news that he’s told the Merediths who he really is. And this is the gist of it, really: Morgan’s biggest challenge in life is to be himself, and for some reason he can do that with Emily. Perhaps it’s because Bonny, although aware of Morgan’s fantasy life, never seems very concerned about it, and so Morgan had no real motive to be himself.
And this is why I missed Anne Tyler: I enjoy her abundant use of trivial detail to show the extraordinary in the lives of seemingly ordinary people (which is why I quoted so much of the text). The reader can identify with her characters because they are so well-developed that there is bound to be something we recognize – people are true to life with their emotions and misunderstandings and views of love and marriage. Often, her themes are depressing: flawed relationships; the loneliness, or aloneness, that exists in all of us; or the sense of our own mortality that is always there. But comic relief runs rampant, which is how I was able to pass through my period of emotional angst regarding Morgan Gower. And in the end, like all the main characters, I was left feeling quite satisfied with the way things turned out.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 17, 2011
My least favourite Anne Tyler book so far combining two of my pet peeve story lines: 1) infidelity and 2) young, beautiful, bright woman ending up with a mentally-unstable, crusty old man. Still well-written.
January 4, 2018
I don’t think I’ll be liking this novel once I’m middle-aged, forgetful and grumpy. Even now I can’t write a decent shopping list.
September 4, 2020
I'm still reading through all of Anne Tyler's novels, and after the disappointment that was Vinegar Girl, I was so happy that this book from 1980 really sucked me in. I liked Morgan Gower, but I liked some of the other less quirky characters even more. The plot twist is a little strange, yes, but I found it really engaging.
July 26, 2013
I really like Anne Tyler, so I was too stubborn to give up on this, though I considered it several times. Morgan Gower is possibly the most eccentric character I've encountered. They say some people march to the beat of a different drummer. I think Morgan Gower listened to a drumbeat in an alternate reality. And, truly, I didn't especially care one way or the other.
August 7, 2011
My favorite Anne Tyler novel, but they are all masterful. This one has a 'Hanna and Her Sisters' twist.
I hope she comes out with a new one before long, but until she does I will just have to reread all her others for the fourth time. As I just did Morgan.
This time through I realize that the Bonny character is autobiographical. She resembles Ms. Tyler from the physical description, and at one point she admits she intends to write this story (a tip-off I did not remember).
Bonny is not the main character. She tolerates and lives with the main character, Morgan Gower. Tyler was also married to an M, the (presumably wonky) shrink Dr. Taghi Modarressi, who died in 1997. When Morgan walks onstage (almost literally), he's pretending to be a doctor. I also see now that Tyler "kills off" Morgan in a sense. (The book was written in 1980 when her M was presumably quite fit.) Morgan doesn't die, but in a way he dies to her. Hence, "Morgan's Passing" is a wry obit, although I had always thought she meant that the itinerant M.G. was just "passing through" various identities and other people's lives, including Bonny's. Of course, she could mean it both ways (those clever writers).
And who is this aggravating Morgan Gower? He's a maddeningly irresponsible fellow who always does the right thing. He's the creative male's inner child, separated at birth, now all grown up, and doing exactly as he pleases, except when he can't. Which is just about anytime there's a woman around to tell him what to do.
I hope she comes out with a new one before long, but until she does I will just have to reread all her others for the fourth time. As I just did Morgan.
This time through I realize that the Bonny character is autobiographical. She resembles Ms. Tyler from the physical description, and at one point she admits she intends to write this story (a tip-off I did not remember).
Bonny is not the main character. She tolerates and lives with the main character, Morgan Gower. Tyler was also married to an M, the (presumably wonky) shrink Dr. Taghi Modarressi, who died in 1997. When Morgan walks onstage (almost literally), he's pretending to be a doctor. I also see now that Tyler "kills off" Morgan in a sense. (The book was written in 1980 when her M was presumably quite fit.) Morgan doesn't die, but in a way he dies to her. Hence, "Morgan's Passing" is a wry obit, although I had always thought she meant that the itinerant M.G. was just "passing through" various identities and other people's lives, including Bonny's. Of course, she could mean it both ways (those clever writers).
And who is this aggravating Morgan Gower? He's a maddeningly irresponsible fellow who always does the right thing. He's the creative male's inner child, separated at birth, now all grown up, and doing exactly as he pleases, except when he can't. Which is just about anytime there's a woman around to tell him what to do.
March 16, 2009
I was disappointed with Morgan's Passing. I loved the first half of the book, but was disturbed when Morgan had romantic feelings for Emily and ended up leaving his wife for her. That seemed like is wasn't consistent with his character- the man I thought he was. He seemed to love his wife and daughters- although at times he felt overrun by the chaos- but I come from a big family. I understand feeling present but absent but that didn't explain to me why his character just left all that behind without a second glance.
I still enjoyed Ann Tyler's writing and the way she describes people- I feel so intimate with her characters when I am reading her books. But this one was a disappointment to me.
I still enjoyed Ann Tyler's writing and the way she describes people- I feel so intimate with her characters when I am reading her books. But this one was a disappointment to me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 2, 2010
Anne Tyler is so good. She's not everyone's cup of tea, but I just love reading her novels. They're quirky. Morgan irritated me somewhat at first, but then he grew on me. What I like about Tyler is that she deals with people who seem *almost* real, but they're just a little bit off. And they get into situations that feel *almost* familiar, but not quite something that you would ever experience. Yet the emotions ring true.
August 29, 2018
Since reading my first novel by Anne Tyler in 1991, Saint Maybe, and instantly falling in love with her writing, I have read her works chronologically backwards for the most part. So this novel, published in 1980, is the oldest novel of hers I have read to date.
The prose is classic Tyler and every page held my interest for that alone. Still, this story does not rank up there with my Tyler faves and would not be one that I would recommend to readers who have yet to discover this incomparable author.
The prose is classic Tyler and every page held my interest for that alone. Still, this story does not rank up there with my Tyler faves and would not be one that I would recommend to readers who have yet to discover this incomparable author.
February 23, 2021
anne was just wildin' with this one
October 8, 2011
Morgan's Passing was a disappointment for me personally, but I bet a lot of Anne Tyler fans would enjoy it. She is definitely an author that has her own style and it is
easy to see in this book, but the story lacks the brilliantly odd characters of The Accidental Tourist or the emotional plot of Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant. It
didn't take me long to lose interest in pretty much everything about this novel and once I lose interest, it is hard for me to get back into the story. I rarely give up
on books though so I pushed through to the end and, since I plan on reading all of Tyler's work, I am glad I did so. However, if bordom was a physical thing, this book
would be completely encased in it, at least for fans of more unrealistic books. Being realistic is a good thing, but sometimes you can just look out a window or go for
a walk in the park and see the lives of other people instead of reading through 346 pages.
easy to see in this book, but the story lacks the brilliantly odd characters of The Accidental Tourist or the emotional plot of Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant. It
didn't take me long to lose interest in pretty much everything about this novel and once I lose interest, it is hard for me to get back into the story. I rarely give up
on books though so I pushed through to the end and, since I plan on reading all of Tyler's work, I am glad I did so. However, if bordom was a physical thing, this book
would be completely encased in it, at least for fans of more unrealistic books. Being realistic is a good thing, but sometimes you can just look out a window or go for
a walk in the park and see the lives of other people instead of reading through 346 pages.
May 25, 2020
My father once told me that he went into a bookshop and picked up a book, looked at the cover, and was hooked. He took it to the counter and asked if the book was as good as its cover. The response was yes, so he bought it. Since then my whole family has read it. Morgan's Passing was the book, in case that was unclear.
I began Morgan's Passing, knowing it would be well written. I laughed, nearly cried, and finished the book not knowing if I liked or despised the main character. And in the end, hands down the best book I have read to date. The writing is beautiful and so easy to get lost in the text. This is the only book I have ever read that I mistook it for a movie, it was so visual in my head.
I would recommend to anyone wanting to read this book to not read the blurb or any summaries before starting, just read and let it wash over you.
I began Morgan's Passing, knowing it would be well written. I laughed, nearly cried, and finished the book not knowing if I liked or despised the main character. And in the end, hands down the best book I have read to date. The writing is beautiful and so easy to get lost in the text. This is the only book I have ever read that I mistook it for a movie, it was so visual in my head.
I would recommend to anyone wanting to read this book to not read the blurb or any summaries before starting, just read and let it wash over you.
May 15, 2019
I really enjoyed this book. It's a surprise that makes you think.
June 3, 2020
One of her best. The characters shine out with authenticity, and somehow cheered me up in spite of the chaos in which they live. Highly recommend ed.
September 9, 2025
Дуже хороша, хоч і неоднозначна, книга. Написана неспішно ( любителям динамічних сюжетних творів навряд чи варто рекомендувати), динаміка розвитку як таких не те, щоб відсутня, але майже не відчувається. Три головних персонажі, а всі решта загалом створюють тло. Події роману охоплюють доволі тривалий період часу, десь із кінця шеститесятих до кінця семидесятих. Що характерно - жоден з персонажів не є позитивним героєм, всі вони дуже неоднозначні і суперечливі, максимально схожі на живих людей. Енн Тайлер, без сумніву, майстер детального опису. Вона вибирає настільки точні стилістичні фігури, настільки детально і яскраво описує середовище, героїв, події, що створюється ефект власної присутності. Як не дивно, жоден з героїв не викликав у мене співчуття, але це робило роман ще привабливішим. Сакме тому, що він максимально про життя.
У романі три головні герої, Морган Гауер, Емілі та Леон Мерідіти. Короткий сюжет - Морган, якому страшенно обридло його життя в родині, де мало хто його помічає за щоденними турботами, випадково допомагає молодій сім'ї, таким чином знайомиться з ними. В сім'ї Емілі та Леона не все гладко, і згодом Морган, який невпинно тримає їх у полі зору, "навмисно випадково" знову зустрічається з ними і стає їх доволі близьким другом. З часом у Моргана і Емілі починається роман, в результаті якого їх сім'ї руйнуються, а Емілі та Морган починають нове життя, переїхавши до нового міста, причому Морган починає це життя під іменем першого чоловіка Емілі, він стає таким собі Леоном Мерідітом. Саме тому роман і названо Morgan is passing, тобто "Морган помирає". Те, що Морган "помирає", особливо підкреслює епізод з його колишньою дружиною Бонні, яка довго не могла відпустити від себе Моргана, хоча речі його, як і все, що було з ним пов'язане, викинула з дому відразу ж. Коли вона, нарешті, позбавляється спогадів і емоцій, пов'язаних з Морганом, і розпочинає стосунки з іншим чоловіком, вона публікує в газеті некролог про смерть Моргана і його похорон, що, власне, і є своєрідним символом нового життя, яке отримує Морган, правда, як зовсім інша людина. Отака заплутана історія.
Сюжет доволі простецький, але персонажі просто чудові. Емілі - така собі маленька, тоненька, яку, мабуть, ніхто б і не помітив у натовпі. Вона сама не розуміє, чого хоче в цьому житті. Вона з тих жінок, яких постійно необхідно спрямовувати, яким потрібно керувати, яких так люблять чоловіки. Слабка жінка, сильна своєю слабкістю. Мене вона дратувала. Як і її чоловік Леон, самозакоханий, впертий, він вважає себе великим, але не визнаним актором, і у всіх своїх невдачах він звинувачує кого завгодно, лише не себе. Він завжди незадоволений - саме це запам'яталося найбільше. Морган - найцікавіший з усіх персонажів, хоча він теж дратує страшенно. Дорослий чоловік, у якого, якщо я правильно пам'ятаю, 11 внуків, зумів залишитися настільки інфантильним, що все життя сприймає як гру, як щось несправжнє, вигадане, що можна змінити миттєво. Він вигадує собі різні особистості і проводить час, граючи їх роль у житті. Він вигадує собі життя, почуття, ситуації і живе так, ніби це все насправді, а справжні обставини сприймає як щось, чого насправді нема. Так він руйнує своє життя, життя Емілі, життя власної дружини Бонні, яка за повсякденними справами забула про себе, однак придумує собі нове життя з Емілі, перебираючи на себе роль колишнього чоловіка в тому, що виконує роботу, яку раніше виконував Леон, бере його ім'я, і навіть у деталях починає поводитися як Леон. Це роман не про набуття ідентичності, а, швидше, про її втрату.
Загалом, мені дуже сподобався роман, але не думаю, що його можна рекомендувати всім.
У романі три головні герої, Морган Гауер, Емілі та Леон Мерідіти. Короткий сюжет - Морган, якому страшенно обридло його життя в родині, де мало хто його помічає за щоденними турботами, випадково допомагає молодій сім'ї, таким чином знайомиться з ними. В сім'ї Емілі та Леона не все гладко, і згодом Морган, який невпинно тримає їх у полі зору, "навмисно випадково" знову зустрічається з ними і стає їх доволі близьким другом. З часом у Моргана і Емілі починається роман, в результаті якого їх сім'ї руйнуються, а Емілі та Морган починають нове життя, переїхавши до нового міста, причому Морган починає це життя під іменем першого чоловіка Емілі, він стає таким собі Леоном Мерідітом. Саме тому роман і названо Morgan is passing, тобто "Морган помирає". Те, що Морган "помирає", особливо підкреслює епізод з його колишньою дружиною Бонні, яка довго не могла відпустити від себе Моргана, хоча речі його, як і все, що було з ним пов'язане, викинула з дому відразу ж. Коли вона, нарешті, позбавляється спогадів і емоцій, пов'язаних з Морганом, і розпочинає стосунки з іншим чоловіком, вона публікує в газеті некролог про смерть Моргана і його похорон, що, власне, і є своєрідним символом нового життя, яке отримує Морган, правда, як зовсім інша людина. Отака заплутана історія.
Сюжет доволі простецький, але персонажі просто чудові. Емілі - така собі маленька, тоненька, яку, мабуть, ніхто б і не помітив у натовпі. Вона сама не розуміє, чого хоче в цьому житті. Вона з тих жінок, яких постійно необхідно спрямовувати, яким потрібно керувати, яких так люблять чоловіки. Слабка жінка, сильна своєю слабкістю. Мене вона дратувала. Як і її чоловік Леон, самозакоханий, впертий, він вважає себе великим, але не визнаним актором, і у всіх своїх невдачах він звинувачує кого завгодно, лише не себе. Він завжди незадоволений - саме це запам'яталося найбільше. Морган - найцікавіший з усіх персонажів, хоча він теж дратує страшенно. Дорослий чоловік, у якого, якщо я правильно пам'ятаю, 11 внуків, зумів залишитися настільки інфантильним, що все життя сприймає як гру, як щось несправжнє, вигадане, що можна змінити миттєво. Він вигадує собі різні особистості і проводить час, граючи їх роль у житті. Він вигадує собі життя, почуття, ситуації і живе так, ніби це все насправді, а справжні обставини сприймає як щось, чого насправді нема. Так він руйнує своє життя, життя Емілі, життя власної дружини Бонні, яка за повсякденними справами забула про себе, однак придумує собі нове життя з Емілі, перебираючи на себе роль колишнього чоловіка в тому, що виконує роботу, яку раніше виконував Леон, бере його ім'я, і навіть у деталях починає поводитися як Леон. Це роман не про набуття ідентичності, а, швидше, про її втрату.
Загалом, мені дуже сподобався роман, але не думаю, що його можна рекомендувати всім.
May 5, 2021
2,5 балла. Обычно чтение Энн Тайлер очень умиротворяющее, но тут главный герой бесил настолько, что хотелось поскорее закончить книжку, чтобы не раздражаться. Вроде бы из обычной ее породы недотыкомок, но на самом деле инфантильный эгоцентрик, разрушающий жизни всех, кто имеет несчастье попасть в его орбиту. Просто ночной кошмар, а не человек.
September 5, 2024
Easy writing style but irritating storyline, in pretty equal measure.
February 3, 2014
Having read several Anne Tyler books, I know her writing style and the types of stories and characters she creates, but this book was just weird. Not one her best, in my opinion. I guess that Morgan should be the main character since his name is in the title, but he didn't seem nearly as developed or real as Emily. For me, the best parts of this book were Emily: her feelings about motherhood, marriage, her upbringing, and the life she ultimately leads. The puppets were fun to read about, and convincing. I think this book was published in 1980...which usually would be no problem; I read books from all different decades. This one felt dated and stale or even a bit depressing. There were some parts I liked, and I will post some quotes for those, but...I think unless you are a die-hard Anne Tyler fan who has read everything and is desperate for more, you can skip "Morgan's Passing"...which reminds me: the very title drove me nuts in the last few confusing and far-fetched pages. I was seriously thinking I was reading about ghosts conversing with the living or something. A muddy ending.
December 5, 2017
About halfway through this book it occurred to me that the narrative style of this book reminded me very much of a book I read (and loved) earlier this year - A Spool of Blue Thread. So I looked that book up on Goodreads, and lo and behold it was also by Anne Tyler. That explains that!
I very much enjoyed this book. The character studies are wonderful. And I love the way that people just get on with things. They aren't emotionless, but life still happens. It feels very true to my experience of life.
The only unfortunate thing for me was, once I discovered this book was by the same author as Blue Thread, I kept comparing the two, and I just loved Blue Thread so much, and this wasn't quite as good. Still, I really did enjoy it, and I'll probably pick up another Anne Tyler book now I know that I clearly like her style.
I very much enjoyed this book. The character studies are wonderful. And I love the way that people just get on with things. They aren't emotionless, but life still happens. It feels very true to my experience of life.
The only unfortunate thing for me was, once I discovered this book was by the same author as Blue Thread, I kept comparing the two, and I just loved Blue Thread so much, and this wasn't quite as good. Still, I really did enjoy it, and I'll probably pick up another Anne Tyler book now I know that I clearly like her style.
October 31, 2022
Anne Tyler is one of my favourite novelists - the way she burrows into the everyday lives of apparently 'ordinary' people and makes them extraordinary. And her gentle humour and compassion for struggling humans (and pets!). But I was a bit disappointed in this novel. Although Morgan is obviously 'eccentric', I found his eccentricity pretty unbelievable, often irritating, and sometimes downright sinister. Perhaps the novel has become somewhat dated - for example, Morgan's stalking of a young woman and her family, portrayed in the book as comic, has been recognised in more recent years as criminal and potentially dangerous. Nevertheless there are themes in the novel that struck me as very pertinent today - for example, the overwhelming 'clutter' of family and home life in countries like the US and a longing for simplicity.
October 14, 2010
Anne Tyler has done it again. Drawn me in to characters that are so odd that I don't really want to know them, and yet, so endearingly quirky that I can't help but be drawn to them. And then there's that recognition of my own traits in the characters. And that's why I read every title of Anne Tyler's I get my hands on. This gem was waiting for me at the Moose Lake, MN public library.
"He did not believe that there was anything in the world that would make her really happy. Unless, perhaps, she could bring a whole solar system into line exactly her way, not a planet disobeying. What was it she expected of him? he would ask. She was silent."
"He did not believe that there was anything in the world that would make her really happy. Unless, perhaps, she could bring a whole solar system into line exactly her way, not a planet disobeying. What was it she expected of him? he would ask. She was silent."
October 5, 2012
I love Anne Tyler -- that's a given. But this book, which I originally missed and just read now, rounded out a summer of no favorites. Morgan, it would seem, is supposed to be wonderfully eccentric, but I found him creepy, a stalker, and a ne'er-do-well. Leon was off-putting too, as were the puppets. I read the whole thing, but it was with great relief that the curtain finally fell on the entire cast of uninteresting characters.
December 12, 2011
Normally, I love Anne Tyler. But this book, while well written and interesting, had main charcters who were so unlikeable. It's hard to care what happens to unsympathetic characters. Some of the minor characters were unexplored and seemed more realistic, or at least interesting. But Morgan was just a freak.
November 30, 2015
this is utter drivel Morgan is a hugely dysfunctional man approaching middle aged man who likes dressing up and taking on other characters, jobs, life events. In fact almost every character is entirely dysfunctional and the whole has no real sense or meaning.. It really is about time Goodreads allowed us to rate 0 stars
February 29, 2012
Somewhat disappointing, because I absolutely love most of Anne Tyler's novels. I really disliked the main character and my rating is therefore rather subjective, because I do think it was a well crafted book.
December 7, 2017
So, what can I say about this book? It is really good. It was my first book by Anne Tyler, and for me it was like good "culture shock". It is written with lot of sense, humour and love. If you never had ridden Anne Tyler, "Morgan's Passing" will be an ideal variant to start!
/Sorry for mistakes/
/Sorry for mistakes/
December 8, 2017
I love everything Anne Tyler writes. This story is of a hardware store clerk with seven daughters, and a rich imagination. He falls in love with a young married woman. Wonderful story.
January 16, 2019
This book had given me a strong feeling that I need to update my collection of hats.
May 1, 2020
A quirky, aging man, living an unfulfilled life, will keep you amused from page one, to the last page.
A five-star story by Anne Tyler.
A five-star story by Anne Tyler.
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